Educators implement effective practices in areas of classroom management, planning, instruction, assessment, evaluation and reporting.
Educators have the knowledge and skills to facilitate learning for all students and know when to seek additional support for their practice. Educators thoughtfully consider all aspects of teaching, from planning through reporting, and understand the relationships among them. Educators employ a variety of instructional and assessment strategies.
Artifact
This piece of evidence is a science unit on Matter that I created for the grade 3 class I was student teaching. We learned about what atoms look like in each state of matter, examples of solids, liquids, and gases, changing states of matter (evaporation, condensation, freezing, and melting), and chemical and physical changes. We ended with two experiments (making chalk and balloon blast) and a quiz for summative assessment. This is evidence of effective unit and lesson planning, instruction, and assessment. You can see to the right some examples of activities we did throughout the unit. I also used BrainPop Jr. to show students videos about matter to further their understanding.
Insights Gained
Throughout planning this unit, I have learned how to sequence my lessons effectively to build of students' knowledge and continue to challenge my students' thinking. Students were able to to engage in hands-on activities such as the Cheerio activity and the experiments as well as visual/audio activities such as the BrainPop Jr. videos and the picture activities. This has allowed me to differentiate to meet my student's needs and understand that all students learn differently.
Connection to Teaching Practice
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The following pictures are examples of activities we did in our grade 3 Matter unit. See below for references for these resources.
References
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This will be a unit I can use again in my future teaching practice. I have a binder full of resources that I used and ones I can try next time. I got to experience teaching this whole unit to my students and I learned what worked and what I will change. This also gave me further experience in unit and lesson planning which will help me sequence and plan future units. This artifact demonstrates effective planning, instruction, assessment, and how educators use a variety of different instructional tools when teaching.
Artifact
This piece of evidence is a mini-unit that my classmate and I created for the grade one class we were student teaching. This unit focuses on identifying and expressing feelings relating back to the book Ishi by Akiko Yabuki. The students found and created their own Ishis to use as a self-regulation tool, they also built houses for their Ishis to live in during the unit. Lesson #3 of this unit is based around the book Sophie Gets Angry - Really, Really Angry by Molly Bang, we brainstormed different feelings and made an anchor chart for what they know. In the end, we created a class book with all of their Ishi pictures and sentences. The tool I used to create the unit plan and lesson plans were a unit plan template and lesson plan template shared to our class by our VIU professors.
Insights Gained
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This is a picture of the book 'Ishi' by Akiko Yabuki, to learn more about Ishi please visit http://www.ishitherock.com
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Throughout this unit planning, I have learned how to connect multiple lesson plans to one big idea. I think it is important to view lesson planning as a continuous process, it will make planning easier in the long run. It was very helpful to have a template because it guides our learning and allows us grow as pre-service teachers
Connection to Teaching Practice
Throughout my teaching I will be making many unit plans and lesson plans. This is a good opportunity to practice planning efficiently and writing effective unit plans and lesson plans that all connect to the curriculum. This particular unit can be easily modified to focus on different things, with this particular grade 1 class we used it as a way of identifying feelings and what to do when you feel that way. Ishi can also be used as a tool for self-regulation in the classroom; it is a very versatile unit. This artifact demonstrates effective planning and how educators thoughtfully consider all aspects of teaching, from planning to evaluating.
The above pictures are examples of the student's Ishis that they made! We made a class book so we asked them to show us their Ishi's favourite activity.
Once the student's added their sentence to their pictures, we put them all together to make a class Ishi book! These are examples of three of the student's final pages.
"A good teacher can inspire hope, ignite the imagination, and instill a love of learning"
- Brad Henry
- Brad Henry